Charlotte's Web 2013

incredible transparency that is the indication of one with Down’s Syndrome.

What amazed me the most was Oliver’s usage of words that he deemed as meaningful. “I’m sorry,” “I love you,” “Please,” — although not “Thank you” — and, somewhat comically, “Yes,” were the most infrequently used words in Oliver’s articulation of the English language.

The more Oliver grew, the more I came to love him, and the more I came to realize that he was the model for whom I wanted to become. He was truly free. He had received the breath of freedom from God at the beginning. It was his First Breath, and all I wanted was my Second. I wanted my Second Breath; I wanted to be set free from the deception of current society. I wanted to join Oliver in the realm of whom I began to call the “Breathed.”

It was when I came up with this name that I realized — in all of the fourteen years since I had decided to take up art, my works numbered none.

I decided that my name for those affected by Down’s Syndrome would be my first work. I called it the Maurice Onomasty, trying to sound fancy.

————————————————— I found myself standing over Oliver as he lay in a hospital bed, and not liking it one bit. For it was in that moment that I had a notion — it was fleeting, mind you — that I was greater than my son. Embarrassed of my abhorrently, stereotypically human idea, I felt my face get red in front of God-knows-who, and realized how tired I was.

“I’ve missed you, Sleep,” I said; I gave forth an empty chuckle at how cliché I sounded.

I’ll never forget the fear of God injected into my being when I awoke. A multitude of alarms were simultaneously going off, combining into a frantic soundtrack for the thrashing of Oliver in his white hospital bed. Shouts of “Oh, God,” and “God, help us,” sounded in the sterile hospital room.

My Siddur fell to the ground in the corner of the room. I wondered what God had to do with any of this. And why are they all swearing?

I caught myself when I heard the voice of myself at the age of twenty-one, staring past the gates of Auschwitz above me, straight into the heavens, doubting God in every way possible.

I had left those days behind. I found God’s signature on my son. And now, as I saw my son, my pathway to God, in seizure, I called an immediate end to my abstinence from art. We finally managed to get my son’s seizure under control, and he fell asleep.

I won’t lie and say that I knew exactly what I was going to create — that I was Divinely galvanized — the moment I had decided to partake in the action of creation; I sat dumbly for hours. However, I will say that what I decided upon was inspired.

I decided upon the form of a man, with his arms back, and his chest pressed forward. I supposed this is what Oliver would have looked like had he not been affected by Down’s Syndrome. It progressed to the point where I got permission from the hospital staff to bring in my art supplies to Oliver’s room, where he slept. He slept, and I worked. And when he woke, I would momentarily 31